Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard

Director: Michael Mann

Screenplay: Michael Mann, Ronan Bennett

Running time: 2 hrs 19 mins

Genre: Gangster/Crime/Drama



CRITIQUE:


Social scallywags of the Great Depression era in America were like rock stars, irreverent individuals who defy the morals of society by a hedonistic, no-holds-barred overload of violence, yet despite of such dissident behaviour they become national idols, icons who dared to stick out not only two fingers but also Tommy guns against authority. Cinema, specially, loves rebels. What is cinema without the pantheon of fallen gods, without the figures of Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance, Travis Bickle and Don Corleone?


Michael Mann’s latest outlaw/gangster picture seems intent to put John Dillinger, Depression era’s ultimate crook in a Jesse James status, up there with the cinematic lineup of malcontents. Public Enemies is dark, brooding, intensely furrow-browed that shuns any live-fast-and-die-young whimsy or any raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head muck-about, and rather seriously plunges us straight into a very damned tale of Dillinger’s uninhibited existence. For all its ominous worth, this gangster flick flirts with greatness; a riveting cat-and-mouse chase of two formidable forces, Christian Bale’s no-bullshit agent Melvin Purvis and Johnny Depp’s grim-faced John Dillinger, set in birth of J Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, a fascinating period of America’s lawmaking history.


Nevertheless, there’s one thing this film cannot escape – overfamiliarity. Two polar opposites, two ferociously talented actors of their generation, stalled in gut-churning shoot-outs, one cannot help to feel Mann’s Heat over again, with De Niro and Pacino battling it out. Even Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight shares the similarities: Purvis as the Crusading Night, Dillinger as the extremist, sharing the Joker’s force of nature. Pitted between these glowerers is the cloak-girl Billie Frechette (a wonderful Marion Cotillard), Dillinger’s moll, who puts a human face and a human heart to this gloomy tragedy, the beating pulse that could swerve Dillinger’s fate from downfall.


Gripes in the storytelling aside, as it bogs down in many places inbetween, this is a visceral, skilfully shot picture with Mann employing high-definition, ultra-pin-sharp precision in the camerawork of Dante Spinotti. The jerky frames spits at the flourishes of many ostentatiously choreographed gangster/crime movies and rather punches a gritty realism, as though Lars von Trier with his Dogme 95 decided to shoot a gangster flick. There is a documentary feel to this, bringing immediacy, an astonishing closeness to the period of 1930s, and the details of trilby, cars, costumes and glitzy rooms never feel mounted but natural to the environs.


VERDICT:

Hampered by its indecision whether it wanted to be an outlaw movie, a prison-break thriller, a courtroom drama, a law force critique, or a rise-and-fall gangster flick, Public Enemies might just be worth your dosh for being many pictures at once in this financial climate. Although technically accomplished with a searing cinematography, it has a serious lack of narrative momentum.



RATING: B+